Prior-free online mechanisms for queueing with arrivals
Article Type
Research Article
Publication Title
Economic Theory
Abstract
Agents from a finite population arrive at various discrete times, and exit after they use a server for one period each. Each agent has a per-period cost of queueing, which constitutes his private information. Among direct mechanisms that are prior-free, i.e. independent of distributions of arrivals and costs, and online, i.e. charge only those present in the system, we characterize the class of dynamically strategy-proof mechanisms with least total waiting cost. The budget is balanced eventually under a mild condition on the arrival sequence, while a canonical mechanism that achieves budget balance in each period is also characterized under a stronger condition.
First Page
671
Last Page
700
DOI
10.1007/s00199-020-01308-7
Publication Date
9-1-2021
Recommended Citation
Ghosh, Sambuddha; Long, Yan; and Mitra, Manipushpak, "Prior-free online mechanisms for queueing with arrivals" (2021). Journal Articles. 1834.
https://digitalcommons.isical.ac.in/journal-articles/1834
